Dead Man's Apprentice
by Zpan Sven
Summary: Aioros is dead, a literal ghost, but he's not given up. He will protect his Goddess...he just had to find some help to do it in the form of a child who could actually see him. What's this? A dead man taking an apprentice! No longer a one-shot.
1. Chapter 1

**DEAD MAN'S APPRENTICE**

**AUTHOR:** Zpan Sven

**E-MAIL:** Zpan(underscore)Sven(at)hotmail(dot)com or zpan(dot)sven(at)gmail(dot)com

**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Saint Seiya, only the characters of my creation, this story, and the alterations I have made to the characters, histories, ect. No profit is being made from this; this is being written solely for the enjoyment of myself and others whom like to indulge in the scenario of 'what if?'.

**AUTHOR' NOTES:** One of my infamous 'What If?' fanfics, where I take some of my ideas, an inserted character or two, the plot of an anime and throw them in the blender set on puree just to see what happens. Currently a one-shot but if I get enough feedback, I'll expand on it.

"Some believe it is the ability to speak that separates us from the animals…"

'_I think, there for I am…'_

_**:Our minds are as one…: **_

**SUMMARY:** Aioros is dead, a literal ghost, but he's not given up. He will protect his Goddess...he just had to find some help to do it in the form of a child who could actually see him. What's this? A dead man taking an apprentice?

**RATING:** T (will go up if continued)

**WARNINGS:** Mentions of violence, the occasional swear word.

**GENRE:** Action & Adventure/Drama/Supernatural/Humor

**ARCHIVE:** FanFiction(dot)Net, FicWad(dot)Com, Zpan Sven's Works, others please ask

Just because he was dead did _not_ mean Aioros was going to give up, not when the Goddess needed him. Unfortunately, because Saga was now masquerading as Pope Shion and declared the Sagittarius Saint a traitor, the only Saint he could approach in this new ghostly form would send him straight to Hell. Of course, Aioros suspected the young Cancer Saint would probably have done so irregardless; thanks to the training the boy had undergone to traverse the boundaries between the living and the dead he was hardly what many would consider sane, even for a Saint. Maybe if the previous Cancer Saint had actually been sane too, the training wouldn't have had such an impact and it probably would have stopped that disturbing tradition the boy had taken up of making masks out of the faces he killed like his late Master...

Wandering around the Kido mansion wasn't much better, not by far. He was the ghost of a thirteen-year-old _Greek_.

In **Japan**.

And he only spoke Greek, English, some French and Spanish. He knew not a single word of Japanese.

_At all._

He did encounter other ghosts in his wanderings. Most only spoke Japanese, but some spoke enough English for them to actually have an informative conversation about his new state of being. It was from them he learned how few people could _truly_ see and hear the spirits of the dead and not see mere flickers of them. Of those people, an even rarer few were actually able to channel the ghost in a voluntary possession, acting as an intermediary between the living and the dead.

Heartened by the existence of these people, he began searching for a potential medium. However, most he found were out and out frauds, scamming people who were desperate to contact their dead loved ones. Those he found with actual ligament abilities spoke very little to no English.

Standing at the side of the crib of his infant Goddess, he sighed glumly. So far she had been the only one to see and hear him, but that seemed to be changing as her power grew dormant to hide herself away from Hades's agents.

He couldn't protect her like this. As he was now, Aioros had no real power or strength – he was a collection of Cosmos with a consciousness but nothing more and anything he could do was limited greatly. One weak hit that a Bronze Saint could shake off he was all he was capable of at the moment along with pushing or throwing around a few random objects. It was beyond frustrating to be forced into the role of a mere spectator...

The days seemed to blend together for Aioros as he followed the young Goddess around through her daily routine. As an infant, she didn't really have an active schedule. Restless after a couple weeks, Aioros began to wander around again, this time exploring every inch of his Goddess's new surroundings in great detail. Being dead, he no longer needed to eat or sleep; as a result he had extensively mapped the interior and exterior of the mansion, along with the vast grounds of the Kido estate in about two weeks.

In doing so, he learned the weaknesses of the Estate's security and found numerous hidey-holes that would attract the interest of curious children. These he kept in mind, just in case Saga's people found out about her before she Awakened to her abilities while he lacked his physical body; he would be able to act as a guide, he was certain.

Afterward, for the first time since his futile search for a medium, he began to venture away from the Kido estates, learning about the area around it. Sometimes he'd drift aimlessly; one such time, he found himself in what he learned was called a museum, ending up quite ironically in an exhibit dedicated to Ancient Greece. The familiar artifacts, so like what could be found in his and the Goddess's true home of Sanctuary made him immensely home-sick.

It made him internally curse and rage against Saga; because of his greedy ambitions, Aioros was reduced to be a wandering spirit and the young Goddess had been driven from her home and into a dangerous world without protection from her loyal Saints. It wasn't right, it wasn't fair. There was a Holy War coming in only a few short years!

Tearing his eyes away from a painting of his Goddess, he found his gaze meeting a set of eerily familiar green eyes. For all of a moment he thought it was Aiolia until he was able to process the rest of the child's appearance – curly light brown hair the same shade his had been, an exotic mingling of Grecian and Asian facial features, and the fact the small child was dressed in feminine garb, the white and pink of her floral dress accenting her naturally tanned Grecian skin.

_And she was looking right at him._

Aioros had become somewhat used to people looking through him, but this little girl who was only a couple years older then his Goddess, was looking _at_ him as though she could see him quite clearly. If his heart was still beating, he was certain that the organ would be beating in his chest at light-speed.

Numerous thoughts raced through him, the top two being that she could really see him while the other revolved around why she looked so much like Aiolia and himself. The resemblance was eerie, but then again he knew next to nothing about the origins of his parents' families save they were Greek by nationality; the only thing he knew about his father was that the man had once been a Saint trainee who had ended up becoming a Guard. The man had died shortly after Aiolia's conception and their mother had told them that they looked almost identical to their father.

But the _odds_! The sheer odds!

The elderly Japanese man who held the little girl's hand called what Aioros assumed was her name – Yumi – which made her finally look away from the ghost of the Sagittarius Saint and up at the elderly man. When Aioros saw them leaving, panic raced through him. No, no, no, he couldn't lose this possible connection to his family and the world of the living!

And that was how he ended up following them home. It was there he discovered that the elderly man – the grandfather, it turned out – had married a Greek woman in his younger years. The woman in question in the various photos looked like little Yumi, like Aiolia and himself. Of course, then he met the Grandmother's ghost, who still lingered well over two decades after her death. It was from her he found the answers to many of his questions, such as that she once had a young nephew who he greatly looked like that had vanished a long time ago, a boy who had the same name of his father.

He also found that Yumi wasn't just being instructed in the Goddess's own language by the ghost of her grandmother, but that the girl was also a Sagittarius. And the tiny child had a remarkable Cosmos lying dormant under the surface, just waiting to be tapped and harnessed.

That was when he was struck by the idea for his bold plan. There had never been a female Gold Saint before. No Saint had ever been trained by a ghost either, not even the Cancer Saint.

And Aioros? He intended for Yumi to be the first on both counts.


	2. Chapter 2

**DEAD MAN'S APPRENTICE**

**AUTHOR:** Zpan Sven

**E-MAIL:** Zpan(underscore)Sven(at)hotmail(dot)com or zpan(dot)sven(at)gmail(dot)com

**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Saint Seiya, only the characters of my creation, this story, and the alterations I have made to the characters, histories, ect. No profit is being made from this; this is being written solely for the enjoyment of myself and others whom like to indulge in the scenario of 'what if?'.

**AUTHOR' NOTES:** One of my infamous 'What If?' fanfics, where I take some of my ideas, an inserted character or two, the plot of an anime and throw them in the blender set on puree just to see what happens. Currently a one-shot but if I get enough feedback, I'll expand on it.

"Some believe it is the ability to speak that separates us from the animals…"

'_I think, there for I am…'_

_**:Our minds are as one…: **_

**SUMMARY:** Aioros is dead, a literal ghost, but he's not given up. He will protect his Goddess...he just had to find some help to do it in the form of a child who could actually see him. What's this? A dead man taking an apprentice?

**RATING:** T

**WARNINGS:** Mentions of violence, the occasional swear word.

**GENRE:** Action & Adventure/Drama/Supernatural/Humor

**ARCHIVE:** FanFiction(dot)Net, FicWad(dot)Com, Zpan Sven's Works, others please ask

Aioros smiled at the sight of his apprentice. His _apprentice_. Honestly, he had thought he'd have been well into his twenties before taking an official apprentice for his Cloth, just like his Master Alistair. But even dead, the Sagittarius Saint remained as faithful to his duties to Athena as he had when he have been alive.

And that included training his replacement.

Yumi was a worthy candidate for that, even though some of his fellow native Greeks and even a good deal of the European Saints would look down on the fact that not only was she of mixed heritage but because she was also _female_.

It had taken a while before Athena had allowed women to rejoin the ranks of her Saints. There had been one of Ares's Amazons hidden in the first group allowed to join, and the battle that resulted when Ares had sprang his sneak attack on the Goddess resulted in the deaths of many Saints and the Ophiuchus Gold Cloth had taken so much damage it had to be reforged as a Silver Cloth while many others became dormant for centuries, like the Andromeda Cloth.

His eyes flickered from Yumi, her face scrunched into a sullen scowl, was pulling weeds over to a handful of the boys Kido had gathered together. Kido was trying to train Saints and that unnerved Aioros; the old man meant well, Aioros was certain, but he wasn't doing these orphans much of a favor.

The training methods might be suitable for non-Saints, but without someone there to explain and teach them about harnessing their Cosmos, then the boys would be seriously behind others their age when they were sent off to train for Cloths. Unfortunately, the only one who could explain that to the old man was Aioros. And Aioros was dead and the only person who could see, hear, or interact with him was Yumi.

And as open-minded about Saints as he was, it seemed doubtful the old man would believe a little girl who told him she could see the ghost of a dead Saint, especially given the ghost would be criticizing his methods. Even _if_ she was believed, the old man might then try to press Yumi into his training program and under that man – what was his name, Tatsumi? - who seemed far more inclined to harm the children rather then train them.

No, it was better that they didn't know about Yumi just yet. There was always the possibility of Saga finding out about what Kido was doing and if Aioros wanted to remain a secret, then Yumi had to be one too.

He knew Yumi didn't like it. She was proud to be his apprentice and didn't like that her Master's Cloth was in Kido's hands. She didn't like not being able to 'teach' Athena – or Saori, as Kido now called her – how to be a 'person' and not a 'spoiled brat'.

Aioros allowed himself a cringe. Athena _was_ spoiled rotten and had no idea of who she really was. The boys training to become Her Saints were treated like objects, like toys, by their young Goddess. This was _not_ how is was supposed to be, not how she was supposed to be raised.

But then again, Saga wasn't supposed to have been a traitor either. Sighing, Aioros looked back to his apprentice, who was furiously pulling weeds. And she was pulling them because of him – or more accurately, because he had broken the window of Kido's car with her soccer ball. It had surprised him when he had first learned that Yumi's grandfather knew Kido when the ghost had first started training her, but it was something he took advantage of. As it was, for the 'accidental' destruction of his property, Kido allowed her to make up for it by doing menial chores around his home.

Aioros found his attention captured by the appearance of Athena – Saori – in what Yumi had once told him was riding garb, carrying a riding crop. Unease settled in him and anger bloomed when the young Goddess used one of the boys as her horse. This was Kido's fault, Aioros thought angrily, for keeping her identity and true heritage away from her!

Yumi took them all by surprise though. She had thrown down the weed she been pulling and stood, basically announcing her presence before stalking over to the startled younger children. Without hesitation she shoved the young Goddess off the back of the boy – Jabu, was that his name? - and towered over her. With her short hair, boyish clothes and the fact she was grimy from her 'chore', Yumi almost looked like one of the trainees that Kido had 'collected'. Aioros watched, speechless in shock, at the blistering lecture his apprentice was giving their Goddess about how to treat another human being.

All eyes were on Yumi, some wide in shock, others in awe. And then Tatsumi shook himself and roared something loud and in Japanese too fast for Aioros's limited vocabulary to follow. Yumi whirled, automatically pulling Jabu and Saori behind her protectively even as the walking mountain of a man stormed over to them at full speed.

The ghost bristled as one ham-like fist rose; Jabu flinched back automatically behind the older child who stood with a straight back, squared shoulders, and defiant glare. Aioros looked around wildly for something he could throw or knock over into the man's path – dead or not, he still trained – when Kido intervened.

Sagging in relief, Aioros watched the exchange between little girl and old man as Yumi and Athena's – Saori's – 'Grandfather' exchanged words. Again the Japanese was too fast for him to fully understand, but what he was able to catch insinuated the girl would be speaking to her own grandfather – who held a great deal of those stock-things and was one of the few who knew of the trainees Kido collected – about the incident.

She had Aiolia's temper, something Aioros prayed she would out-grow swiftly, like he had always prayed – and still hoped Aiolia – would mature out of. He was grateful that her displays of impulsive actions were few and far between as she grew. Looking away, the ghostly Saint regarded the forms of his young Goddess and her future Saints. Of them, only the Seiya boy was a Sagittarius and given the animosity he displayed, Aioros wondered if the boy would even survive the 'official' training.

Would any of these boys? He was loathe to use their foreign blood and upbringing as strikes against them, but against 'officially' trained boys in Sanctuary? He didn't know. Maybe if they managed to land excellent or easy teachers.

And the odds of that, now that Saga was parading himself around as both old man Shion and Arles? They weren't in the favor of any future or active trainee; prior to Saga, any who weren't able to make it the level of Saint became one of the protectors of the Sanctuary, a guardsman and the lowest level of the army of Athena's warriors. But now...they would be lucky to survive to become Guardsmen, much less Saints. Of the hundred boys that Kido had collected and planned to send out, it would be almost a miracle for _ten_ of them to become Saints.

And if Kido suspected that, the old man didn't let on.


End file.
